There are sad films, and then there are extremely sad films. Then there are films that can only be described as being “misery porn”, films that have the intention of creating complete and utter despair in the audience to the point where it is wholly uncomfortable. Then you get The Sea of Trees, a film so hopelessly depressing and bleak, and seemingly an attempt to tell some form of morality tale through tragedy, but without the redeeming factors that have set apart similarly sad films and made them worthwhile experiences. The Sea of Trees is a film that has a strong story and a great premise, it just fails almost completely in execution and in understanding precisely what story it was attempting to convey, and the result is a muddled, convoluted mess of a film that tries to be meaningful and profound, but often comes off as being confusingly heartless and just entirely misguided, and depressingly tragic – but not in terms of the story, but in terms of the film itself.

Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) is a scientist who loses his wife, Joan (Naomi Watts) in a shocking accident. The two weeks following her demise takes an unbelievably high toll on Arthur, who decides that he wants to obey her final wish (for him to die in a peaceful place) by venturing off to Japan, where he plans to end his life in the infamous Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji, a location known for being the site of countless suicides, earning the forest the nickname of the “Suicide Forest”. While attempting to kill himself, he encounters another individual named Takumi Nakamura (Ken Watanabe), who also attempted to kill himself but changed his mind and attempted to leave. However, escape from Aokigahara is far from an easy task, and Arthur and Takumi attempt to survive as they try and find their way out of the dreaded (yet tranquil) forest and back to their lives, with both realizing life is worth living after all (a heavy-handed message, but more on that later). Through passionate accounts of the past (so many) and flashbacks (far too many), we start to piece together the tragedies that led Arthur to attempt his demise.

Where to start with The Sea of Trees? The casting of this film was a bit of a problem for me personally, particularly that of the lead character of Arthur. Matthew McConaughey was arguably at his peak around the time The Sea of Trees was made, and thus his acclaim and growing arthouse status allowed him the opportunity to gain some credibility. I myself found him remarkable in films such as Bernie, Dallas Buyers Club, Killer Joe and many other films around this period. The Sea of Trees was certainly not a film that was nearly as good as the aforementioned ones, nor is McConaughey even close to being as good as he has shown to be capable of many times before. There is something entirely unconvincing about McConaughey as a shy and timid professor grieving his wife as well as attempting to survive harsh conditions in the forest. McConaughey, as limited as he is as an actor, is still a professional – but so many of the choices made in this performance were utterly misguided and poor, and his portrayal of intense grieving is misconstrued as being moments of levity, where they’re actually supposed to be far more grave and heartbreaking. It is difficult to not burst into laughter when McConaughey is rambling on about his late wife (who, through frequent flashbacks, he is shown to not really love that much) or when his attempts at survival come across as being unintentionally hilarious rather than heart-racingly intense.

It is a pity McConaughey was so bad (at least he stayed consistent to the film as a whole), because Ken Watanabe is actually genuinely very good, and in his position as one of the most consistently great modern Japanese actors known to worldwide audiences, it is impossible to not find him endearing. He is excellent in nearly everything he does, and has proven himself as someone who is reliably great, regardless of the material – and the same can be said for The Sea of Trees, a film that Watanabe is able to elevate slightly, yet he still falls victim the harsh flaws that this film is burdened with. Existing merely as a vessel on to which McConaughey’s character may spew his regrets and guilt and grievances, Watanabe is given nearly nothing to do other than to give some words of wisdom and limp around with McConaughey as they attempt to survive – and every time one expects something of value to happen regarding Watanabe, it is squandered by the lack of focus, and the fact that this film just is disproportionally depressing. Watanabe actually deserves so much better than this poorly-developed character, and it is just another hopelessly flawed aspect of this film that just depresses me and makes me wish I did not waste my time with this film (and despite all of its flaws, The Sea of Trees is not a waste of time at all, as there are some redeeming qualities, albeit very few).

The Sea of Trees has a solid story, and it manages to convey it, to an extent. It is a film about life and death, and how one needs to be able to make a brief foray into the land of hopelessness and despair in order to come to terms with a certain tragedy – or, as the iconic Dolly Parton once put it in a way that is far more eloquent than anything I could say: “the way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain”. The problem with The Sea of Trees is that it is composed almost entirely of “the rain” and very little of “the rainbow”, and for the most part, the touching and endearing central storyline that runs through the film is entirely squandered by the falsely doleful suffering that these characters seem to be going through, and chronicles how a flirtation with the void of death and despair can either result in a further life being taken away, or a metaphorical “rebirth” of the self, whereby one comes to terms with a tragedy and is able to move on after. We can probably ignore the gloriously insensitive portrayal of what death and grieving supposedly look like in this film, as well as the unintentional glamorizing of suicide, because that will just take up far too much time and just be entirely uninteresting, and far more than this film actually deserves. There is a deeply emotional story below the surface of this film, but the execution just left so much to be desired, and it became quite a laborious experience after a little while, because audiences can only handle a certain amount of distress, and The Sea of Trees exceeds that limit within the first act.

Where precisely did The Sea of Trees go wrong? Perhaps the biggest flaw of this film is that it is about characters the audience simply does not care about, nor do we attempt to want to care about them. Arthur is supposed to be positioned as a tragic figure forced to the edge of death because of an intense loss in his life – yet flashbacks show him as a stubborn, unfaithful milquetoast detached from his wife and reality in the pursuit of his own selfish dreams which put his relationship under strain. Not to say his wife is any more sympathetic, with her character being shown as an overly-sensitive reactionary who incites arguments over the most insignificant incidents, and often even without any logical provocation, she will point out her husband’s flaws. The Sea of Trees is a film built on the grief Arthur felt towards his wife’s passing, yet it is almost impossible to feel sympathy for a pair of characters whose relationship was almost exclusively hostile and filled with petty, avoidable arguments. Understandably, the intention was to show that a marriage can have difficulties, but ultimately it is filled with love for each other – yet the film just makes it difficult for this to be seen as true. Moreover, despite having the potential to be an interesting character, as committing to the role entirely, Watanabe is just so under-developed, and thus the audience just cannot connect with his character at all. There isn’t anything in this film to incite genuine passion or create a connection between the audience and the characters, and the film just falls into pitiful self-indulgence most of the time.

The Sea of Trees‘ biggest flaw is how it fails to capture any semblance of natural emotion. It is one of the most blatant culprits of the overuse of false sentimentality that I have ever seen, whereby Gus Van Sant clearly enjoys manipulating the audience – the problem is that even when a film orchestrates emotion, it does so through making the audience care about these characters – and as said before, these are poorly-written, unremarkable characters who amount to absolutely nothing meaningful. The Sea of Trees sees itself as being far more profound and touching than it actually is, and it resorts to some of the most taut and obvious filmmaking techniques and narrative devices imaginable. The Sea of Trees plays almost like a checklist of storytelling cliches, and it veers off into the region of unintentional parody, and it even fails to be entirely melodramatic or meaningfully profound. It is a film fraught with problems, and not enough redeeming qualities found in its concept to actually justify those flaws or correct them in any way that cancels them out or makes The Sea of Trees a better film.

The Sea of Trees had so much going for it – a talented director behind the lens, a consistently good cast and a story that had so much potential, as well as stunningly gorgeous cinematography that conveys the inherent beauty of the tragic environment (both physical and metaphysical) of the film. There was so much this film could have done with its original and fascinating premise, but rather than attempting to iron out the kinks in the story and make something meaningful, chaotic, lazy filmmaking ensued and not nearly enough attention was given to this film. It is an unfocused, messy and indolent attempt at philosophical conundrums or how one deals with the existential crisis after an enormous tragedy, and it is clear that this film knew what it wanted to say, but it was far too apathetic to the realities of this story to actually convey it properly. The most depressing part of The Sea of Trees is that this was a film that could have been tremendously wonderful, but it just did not manage to reach that potential in any way. Despite some qualities that redeem it, The Sea of Trees has countless problems, and it is not worth the effort. There are far superior films that deal with similar subject matter in a way that isn’t as pandering, convoluted or lackadaisical as The Sea of Trees, one of most disappointing films of recent years, made even worse by the missuse of a captivating cast and a truly beguiling concept, both of which deserved better than this unfortunate misfire of a film.